As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

An
eight-year-old male White-tailed Eagle known as Turquoise Z has been travelling
between Angus and Fife visiting two nests, more than 28 miles apart, and
raising chicks with two different females, RSPB Scotland has announced.

This unusual behaviour, known as polygamy, is rarely recorded in sea eagles. It
has been seen on the west coast of Scotland on a handful of occasions, but
these nests were just a few miles apart and the demands of providing enough
food for both nests always resulted in failure.

Despite the vast distance between these two nests, however, there has been a
successful outcome. In Fife, Turquoise Z raised a female chick tagged Blue X
with his usual partner; he raised a second female tagged Blue V at the nest in
Angus with a new partner.

Turquoise Z was released in 2009 as part of the east Scotland reintroduction.
It has been breeding in a Forest Enterprise Scotland Woodland in Fife since
2013 with a female released in the same year, known as Turquoise 1.

Portland,
ME—Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) has confirmed today that the
translocation of loon chicks from Maine to Massachusetts has resulted in at
least one loon returning to its release lake. In its fifth year of a five-year
initiative funded by the Ricketts Conservation Foundation, Restore the
Call is the largest Common Loon conservation study ever conducted.
Research efforts have focused in three key U.S. breeding population areas from
the western mountains to the Atlantic seaboard.

Restoring
bird species to their former range is an accepted bird conservation practice,
but this is the first time translocation has been carried out for the Common
Loon.

“This
is a big moment for loon conservation,” says David Evers, Ph.D., BRI’s
executive director and a leading expert on loon ecology and conservation. “This
is the first time a translocated loon chick has returned to the lake from which
it was released. The implications for future conservation efforts to help
restore loons to their former breeding range are tremendous.”

The
banded one-year-old juvenile (a term given to loons under three years of age)
sighted early on Wednesday morning, August 16, was confirmed to be one of five
chicks that were successfully translocated from Maine in the summer of 2016,
reared in and released on a lake in southeastern Massachusetts. The juvenile,
sighted again on the following day, was initially observed in a group with two
other young loons, all in basic plumage (they had not yet developed the
recognizable black and white breeding plumage).

Found
only in the Llanos de Moxos - a tropical savanna in northern Bolivia - the
striking Blue-throated Macaw Ara
glaucogularis was nearly trapped to extinction as a result of demand
for the cage bird trade, until 1984, when live export of the species from
Bolivia was banned.

But
while that threat has been reduced (if not entirely eliminated), the remaining
Blue-throated Macaw population, estimated to be in the low hundreds, faces a
significant hurdle in its attempts to rebound. The entirety of its known
breeding range is situated on what is now private cattle ranches, and the
resultant tree-felling and burning has left the Blue-throated Macaws - picky
nesters by necessity - short on viable options.

Blue-throated
Macaws prefer trees with spacious cavities to nest in, but 150 years of cattle-ranching
has resulted in the clearing of most of the larger trees in the region. The
beleaguered species has been recorded to suffer a high rate of nesting failures
in recent years, with predation from species such as Southern Caracara Caracara
plancus and Toco Toucan Ramphastos
toco cited as one of the main factors.

However,
since 2006, Asociacion Armonía (BirdLife in Bolivia), the Blue-throated
Macaw Species
Champion, have been working to boost the species' nesting options. With
support from the Loro
Parque Fundación, Bird
Endowement – Nido Adopito – El Beni-Factors ™ and the Mohammed
bin Zayed Conservation Fund, Armonía has erected numerous next boxes across
the southern part of the Blue-throated Macaw's breeding range, to great effect.
In the eleven years since the programme has been running, 71 chicks have
successfully hatched - a significant number for a species with such a tiny
(50-249) estimated adult population.

Scientists are piecing together clues about the life of the dodo, hundreds of years after the flightless bird was driven to extinction.

Few scientific facts are known about the hapless bird, which was last sighted in 1662.

A study of bone specimens shows the chicks hatched in August and grew rapidly to adult size.

The bird shed its feathers in March revealing fluffy grey plumage recorded in historical accounts by mariners.

Delphine Angst of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, was given access to some of the dodo bones that still exist in museums and collections, including specimens that were recently donated to a museum in France.

Her team analysed slices of bone from 22 dodos under the microscope to find out more about the bird's growth and breeding patterns.

"Before our study we knew very very little about these birds," said Dr Angst.

"Using the bone histology for the first time we managed to describe that this bird was actually breeding at a certain time of the year and was moulting just after that."

Monday, 28 August 2017

Curlew chicks have fledged at a
Co Antrim farm for the first time in 20 years.

Last year a pair of curlews
attempted to breed at Greenmount Hill Farm in Glenwherry for the first time
since 2005 - only to fail to hatch any young.

But this summer RSPB NI's
conservation adviser Neal Warnock was delighted to see that two pairs arrived
back at the farm and he can confirm that one of the pairs has successfully
fledged three young.

It is believed these are the
first curlews to fledge from the site since the 1990s.

The happy news is a real boost
considering that over the past two decades curlew numbers across the UK have
almost halved.

In Northern Ireland more than 80%
of the curlew population has been lost since 1987.

Mr Warnock said: "When news
broke that one of the pairs had hatched three young, their progress became the
talk of the community. It was a very long six-week wait watching them grow
until they finally stretched their wings and departed.

"Curlews only rarely fledge
three young, so this was terrific news for all involved in the project and
should help see them become established on the farm."

The British Ornithologists’ Union
Records Committee (BOURC)
has accepted the Red-footed Booby found at St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, on
2 September 2016 on to its British
list.

The second-calendar-year or older
female bird was seen
arriving exhausted on the beach at the town near Hastings mid-morning
that day, and then held in care until 16 December 2016, when it was
transported to the Cayman Islands. Unfortunately, it then died in
quarantine before release.

The bird was initially observed
flying and landing on water, before moving to a beach, where it was rescued by
the RSPCA, and a full account by its finder, Gail Cohen, was published
in Birdwatch 292: 8-9. Although apparently fully rehabilitated, it
did not survive the transfer to islands in its natural range.

Generations of conservationists
have had their hopes held firm and fast by these modern-day phoenixes with
their story of resurrection from the flames of persecution and blind hatred.

Like many hook-billed,
broadwinged birds of prey, ospreys were anathema to the huntin’ and shootin’
set who cursed their immaculate fish-catching skills in waters reserved for
rods and flies.

As brave men were falling on the
pock-marked landscape of the Somme, so did the fortunes of the osprey on
British soil.

With bounties placed on the
osprey’s head by country estates, along with further harrying by egg robbers
and skin collectors, the fish-hawk ceased nesting on our shores in 1916.

An exciting new project has seen
eight osprey chicks making their maiden flights over the harbour’s waters in
recent days

Its renaissance some 40 years
later, culminating with the arrival of three chicks at Loch Garten in 1959
under the watch of the RSPB, is hailed as one of the great conservation success
stories of the age.

Since then, the osprey’s fortunes
have been as buoyant as its flight.

Tens of thousands of bird lovers
have paid homage in pilgrimages to the Highlands as the number of nests have
risen to treble figures.

Sunday, 27 August 2017

An unprecedented 13 Black-winged
Stilt chicks have fledged in Britain from sites in Kent, Cambridgeshire and
Norfolk, including nine on two RSPB reserves.

This breeding success comes after
years of conservation work to create the ideal marshy habitat for stilts. The
species has become a more frequent sight in recent years, as it has moved from
its traditional nesting grounds in southern Europe in search of wetland habitat
to raise young. However, fledglings are still extremely rare in Britain, with
just a handful of successful breeding attempts in the past decade.

Cliffe Pools RSPB in north Kent
proved to be the most productive site for Black-winged Stilts this summer, as
two pairs fledged an impressive seven chicks. A further two young fledged from
Ouse Washes RSPB, Cambridgeshire, with a final four coming from a nest at
Potter Heigham Marshes, a Natural England reserve in Norfolk, making this
the most successful breeding season for stilts ever in the country.

Harsukh Bhai, a resident of
Junagadh district of Gujarat, was just a common man before he decided to
dedicate his life for a cause which may sound bit strange for many. Fondly
referred as ‘the birdman’, Harsukh Bhai, who is in his 70s, is today known for
his noble work of feeding thousands of birds daily.

From last 17 years, everyday
around 10,000 birds including sparrows visit Harsukh Bhai’s house. It all
started in 2000 when Harsukh Bhai met with an accident and had a fracture in
his leg. While he was resting at his home to recover from injury, one of his
friends got some pearl millet from his farm. Harshukh Bhai hung one of these
cobs on his balcony and this was the turning point in his life. Harshukh Bhai’s
this act attracted a parrot and gradually their number increased. This made him
feel to do something more for these birds.

Few days later, he realised that
there was not enough space in balcony to feed the birds. Harsukh Bhai then got
some old pipes, drilled holes in them and fixed the pearl millet cobs allowing
the birds feed on it comfortably.

Wind energy development in the
Great Plains is increasing, spurring concern about its potential effects on
grassland birds, the most rapidly declining avian group in North America.
However, a new study suggests that for one grassland bird species of concern --
the greater prairie-chicken -- wind energy infrastructure has little to no
effect on nesting. Instead, roads and livestock grazing remain the most
significant threats to its successful reproduction.

Friday, 25 August 2017

A Spanish court in Albacete has
confirmed recently, in a landmark case, that an electricity utility (Iberdrola)
should pay a penalty of 26,000€ for the electrocution of 4 griffon vultures in
Ossa de Montiel (Albacete) last year. In October 2016 the Spanish Ministry of
Agriculture, Environment and Rural Development had fined the company 26,000€
because the line "had no mechanism to prevent electrocution".

The company then appealed to the
court, which now confirmed the penalty. This is important because it confirms,
in the eyes of the Spanish courts, civil liability for electrocution of
wildlife.

Electrocution is one of the major
threats affecting vultures worldwide, as it was clearly demonstrated in the
Vulture multi-Species Action Plan (MsAP), an international action plan covering
15 old world-vultures in more than 120 range states. This umbrella new strategy
for vultures - nature’s primary scavengers, providing indispensable ecological
services as carrion feeders and disposers of disease-carrying carcasses, was
developed by VCF, BirdLife International, and the IUCN Vulture Specialist Group
under a contract from the Coordinating Unit of the Raptors MoU under the
Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), and
will be hopefully adopted in the CMS conference of parties this fall. The
Vulture MsAP provides several solutions to minimize deaths by electrocution,
including legal advocacy towards the type of civil liability now enforced in
Spain.

There are relatively cheap and
effective solutions readily available to insulate dangerous pylons, so this
threat could easily be solved if electricity utilities, governments, and NGOs
all work together.

Targeted forest regeneration
among the largest and closest forest fragments in the Eastern Arc Mountains of
Tanzania and the Atlantic Forest of Brazil can dramatically reduce extinction
rates of bird species over time, new research shows.

Thursday, 24 August 2017

Using isotope fingerprints in
feathers, researchers have pinpointed the northern breeding grounds of Myrtle
Warblers.

Myrtle Warblers breed across much
of Canada and the eastern United States, but winter in two distinct groups—one
along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, another along the US Pacific Coast. They
are also one of the few breeds of eastern warbler that have been able to extend
their range into the far northwest of the continent.

"The Pacific Coast warblers
migrate through the Vancouver area, but it's been a bit of a mystery exactly
where they breed over the summer," says David Toews, who began the
research while a graduate student at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

'We were able to match stable
hydrogen isotopes in feathers collected in Vancouver to latitudinal isotope
records in rainwater, to determine where the feathers were actually
grown," says Toews, who conducted the analysis as a postdoctoral
researcher at Cornell University.

The Chilean government has
rejected plans for a billion-dollar mining project because it would disrupt sea
life, including endangered penguins.

A Chilean company, Andes Iron,
had wanted to extract millions of tonnes of iron in the northern Coquimbo
region as well as building a new port.

Ministers said the project did
not provide sufficient environmental guarantees.

Coquimbo is close to the islands
which form Chile's Humboldt Penguin Reserve.

The area is home to 80% of the
world's Humboldt penguins as well as other endangered species, including blue
whales, fin whales and sea otters.

Environment Minister Marcelo Mena
said: "I firmly believe in development, but it cannot be at the cost of
our environmental heritage or cause risk to health, or to unique ecological
areas in the world."

Mr Mena said the decision of the
ministerial committee had been based on technical aspects and the evidence of
fourteen agencies and was taken without "political considerations."

The Harry Potter phenomenon
has broken publishing and cinema box-office records and spawned a series of
lucrative theme parks. But wildlife experts are sounding the alarm over a sad
downside to JK Rowling’s tales of the troubled young wizard. The illegal trade
in owls has jumped in the far east over the past decade and researchers fear it
could endanger the survival of these distinctive predators in Asia.

Conservationists say the snowy
owl Hedwig – who remains the young wizard’s loyal companion for most of
the Harry Potter series
– is fuelling global demand for wild-caught birds for use as pets. In 2001, the
year in which the first film was released, only a few hundred were sold at
Indonesia’s many bird markets. By 2016, the figure had soared to more than
13,000, according to researchers Vincent Nijman and Anna Nekaris of Oxford
Brookes University in a paper in Global Ecology and Conservation. At
around $10 to $30, the price tag is affordable to most middle-class families.

The issue is of critical concern
because the owls being offered for sale are nearly all taken from the wild.
“The overall popularity of owls as pets in Indonesia has risen
to such an extent that it may imperil the conservation of some of the less
abundant species,” Nijman and Nekaris say.

Wednesday, 23 August 2017

News has just been released by
the Wildlife Trusts today that a pair of Black-crowned Night Herons has
successfully bred in Britain for the first time ever on one of its reserves.

Two adults and two recently
fledged juveniles are now roosting at Somerset Wildlife Trust’s Westhay Moor
NNR on the Somerset Levels, having either bred there or nearby on the Avalon
Marshes site. The birds were captured on camera and made
their debut on Flickr.

Black-crowned Night Heron is a
scarce visitor to Britain, with around 10 or so records each year on average
(accounting for occasional fluctuations); only a dozen or so have been reported
in Somerset since 1800. With Somerset's recent history of breeding Cattle and
Great Egrets and Little Bitterns, this is perhaps a long-overdue event and
reaffirms the Avalon Marshes and Somerset Levels' significance as one of the
country's most important breeding areas for the heron family and other larger
marshland birds.

Bempton
Cliffs bird reserve was in fine fettle last week. The last of its
population of puffins had departed for the winter a few weeks earlier, while
its thousands of young gannets were still being cared for by their parents on
the chalk cliffs of the East Yorkshire nature site. For good measure,
kittiwakes, cormorants and fulmars were also bathing in the sunshine.

It was a comforting sight for any
birdwatcher but this benign picture was in stark contrast to many other bird
reserves in Britain. Our populations of seabirds – arctic skuas, arctic terns
and kittiwakes – are in freefall. And, in some cases, the numbers are dire.

“For reasons that are not
entirely clear – though they are almost certainly concerned with climate change
– Bempton
Cliffs has not suffered from the precipitous declines in seabird
numbers that we see elsewhere,” said Euan Dunn, a principal policy officer for
the RSPB.

They are among nature's best
fliers, spending most of their time in flight … now scientists have shed new
light on how swifts can glide with ease, whatever the weather. A new study
suggests that the aerodynamics of swifts' wings enable them to adapt
effortlessly to sudden changes in wind speed and direction.

The wings' crescent shape lessens
the effects of blustery conditions, helping to stabilise them as they glide
during turbulent weather, researchers say. This means swifts – which eat, mate
and even sleep on the wing – are not forced to use up vital energy to stay on
course.

Model wing

Scientists at Edinburgh
constructed a triangular model wing with the characteristic trailing edge shape
of swifts' wings. They studied its aerodynamic properties by fitting it into a
water flume that simulated airflow during flight. Using a laser sheet and a
digital camera, researchers tracked the movement of tiny glass balls in the
water, to reveal how air flows over the wing.

Results showed for the first time
that as air passes over the wing,
it can form into two or three circulating regions of airflow – known as
leading-edge vortices, or LEVs. In aircraft with triangle-shaped wings –
including Concorde – LEVs can generate extra lift, researchers say.

Monday, 21 August 2017

For the first time, researchers have observed that birds that fly actively and flap their wings save energy. Biologists have now shown that jackdaws minimize their energy consumption when they lift off and fly, because the feathers on their wing tips create several small vortices instead of a single large one. The discovery could potentially be applied within the aeronautical industry.

Sunday, 20 August 2017

Why do some sparrows hatch six chicks while others don’t hatch any? How does upbringing affect the remainder of their lives? Physiological stress in the nest can actually affect birds’ DNA and possibly their lifespan.

A frozen 4,200-year-old redwing thrush has been found perfectly preserved in Norway. The bird, whose age was determined through carbon tests, was dissected to determine if the bird’s organs have also survived the test of time.

The thrush was discovered by a warden with the Norwegian Nature Supervisor Agency on the edge of a snow bank in the Oppdal mountains, according to Jorgen Rosvold, a researcher with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who spoke to NRK.

“That it is 4,000 years old is absolutely fantastic,” said Rosvold. “We have never opened and seen how a 4,000 year-old bird looks inside,” he added.

Researchers initially believed the bird to be no more than a few hundred years old, and now believe it flew over Norway’s skies thousands of years ago. It’s also thought the bird was caught and killed by a wolverine or fox.

“It was probably caught by a wolverine or a fox. We know that wolverines use ice to store food during the summer. So this thrush may have been put in the ice by a wolverine and has only been found again now,” Rosvold said.#

Friday, 18 August 2017

During a walk near a reservoir in a small Japanese town, amateur collectors made the discovery of their lives - the first and oldest fossil bird ever identified in their country.

After sharing their mysterious find with paleontologists at Hokkaido University, brothers Masatoshi and Yasuji Kera later learned the skeletal remains were that of an iconic marine diving bird from the Late Cretaceous Period, one that is often found in the Northern Hemisphere but rarely in Asia. The remarkable specimen - which includes nine skeletal elements from one individual, including the thoracic vertebrae and the femoral bones - is being heralded as the "best preserved hesperornithiform material from Asia" and to be "the first report of the hesperorinthiforms from the eastern margin of the Eurasian Continent."

Identified as a new species, it has been named Chupkaornis keraorum - Chupka is the Ainu word used by indigenous people from Hokkaido for 'eastern,' and keraorum is named after Masatoshi and Yasuji Kera, who discovered the specimen. The bird would have lived during the time when dinosaurs roamed the land.

Hen harriers fighting for survival have rallied despite fears they are on the brink of extinction in England. Ten chicks have hatched in Northumberland, according to conservationists who say three out of five nesting pairs in the county produced young this year. i told in June how hen harrier numbers have fallen by 204 pairs in the last 12 years to just 545 – a decline of more than 27 per cent – with just a handful of territorial pairs now remaining in England. Hen harriers are still facing an uphill battle to re-establish themselves in the uplands of England. Andrew Miller, chairman of the NHHPP The RSPB has warned that the iconic bird is under “severe threat” from extinction, with illegal killing a “significant factor” behind the diminished numbers.

The Northumberland Hen Harrier Protection Partnership said the arrival of the chicks was a positive step in efforts to re-establish them. After another very poor season for hen harriers elsewhere in England, with no successful breeding attempts. Andrew Miller, head of programmes and conservation at Northumberland National Park and chairman of the partnership, said: “Hen harriers are still facing an uphill battle to re-establish themselves in the uplands of England. ”However, with the positive support of all our partners including landowners, ten young birds have successfully fledged. Working together and using the latest scientific techniques is also increasing our knowledge of this amazing species.“ Hen harriers were driven to extinction in mainland Britain during the 19th century. Despite making a comeback, the species has remained rare, with a breeding population under 1,000 pairs making it vulnerable.

A wild bird once thought to be extinct is making a comeback in inland China. The endangered crested ibis' population is now in the thousands. Its revival is also hatching economic spinoffs in the area.

"The crested ibis is known for its beautiful color. In China, we believe that it brings luck and beauty," says Photographer Li Ping.

For more than 2 decades, Li has dedicated his life to capturing photos of the endangered crested ibis. He wants to raise awareness about the rare species.

"In order to save the crested ibis, more people need to know about it. We need to understand that saving the bird also means protecting the environment," says Li.

The wild bird used to live in East Asia and the Russian Far East. But its population plunged as human development encroached on the bird's habitat. At one point, researchers thought the crested ibis was extinct.

Wednesday, 16 August 2017

The role of melanins in creating complex plumage patterns in 9,000 species

Date: August 5, 2017

Source: University of Chicago Press Journals

Summary:

Birds exhibit an extraordinary diversity of plumage pigmentation patterns. It has been overlooked, however, that complex patterns can be produced only with the contribution of melanins because these are the only pigments under direct cellular control.

Monday, 14 August 2017

The Pin-tailed Whydah,
a parasitic bird, could put native Antilles and Hawaiian island species at
risk.

The word “parasite”
often brings to mind an image a small worm, but sometimes, parasitic species
are not what you imagine. Such is the case for the Pin-tailed Whydah, which is
one of only about 100 parasitic bird species in the world.

The Pin-tailed Whydah (Vidua macroura) is native to
sub-Saharan Africa where it is known for its bright orange beak, black and
white body, and the long tail-feathers they grow during mating season. The
distinct coloration of this species has led to their introduction throughout
the world via the pet trade. Although such proliferation might seem harmless,
the Pin-tailed Whydah’s unique parasitism makes it dangerous to native species
if it is accidentally or purposefully released into the wild.